


Midnight Recovery

by Mertiya



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Magic Story, Unresolved Sexual Tension, uncharted realms style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 17:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6294073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Jace beds down for the night in the dungeon, Liliana sits down to dinner--and receives an unexpected guest.  Takes place post "Unwelcome".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Recovery

            The moon was high, the pale rays shining sickly in through the barred windows. Jace sighed and shifted on the mouldy straw. He’d had less pleasant accommodations before—technically. The chains holding his arms to the wall were a bit much, even for Liliana. Well, it was just for one night. Probably. Jace hoped.

            He let his head drop back against the wall, hoping exhaustion would make up for the lack of restfulness of the bed. Five minutes later, cold dampness was spreading onto the back of his head even through his hood, and he was getting a crick in his neck. So maybe this wasn’t going to work so well. For about the tenth time, Jace cursed himself for trying to get Liliana’s help. If he’d only talked himself out of it on the road—well, he’d probably have been eaten by werewolves by now. But it was the principle of the thing.

            Letting his head drop onto his shoulder for the third time, he was almost starting to drowse off through the uncontrollable shivering, when he heard a very loud noise like a thunderclap.

~

            Liliana signaled to her zombie servant to refill her wine and sipped meditatively. Although Jace could presumably leave by planeswalking, doing so would require him leaving whatever progress he had made toward finding Sorin Markov and a good chance of him winding up at square one. She wondered how long it would take before he either gave up or tried one of his stupid plans to get out. It should be amusing, at any rate.

            A loud rumble of thunder startled her, and a drop of wine spattered across the white table. In irritation, she tweaked one of the innumerable spells she had running line fine threads throughout her mansion, and a moment later three pale musicians appeared from behind a pillar, violins raised as they began to play. Liliana smiled, watching their corpse-white fingers slide skillfully across the strings, their blank eyes staring straight ahead.

            Every electric light flickered at once, and Liliana felt one of her alarm spells trigger. Someone had walked in the front door, and one of her larger guardians arose. She felt the change in the flow of energies as it prepared to fight. What she wasn’t expecting was to feel the thread snap with a bright, hot shock. An annoyed eyebrow rose, and Liliana slowly got to her feet, drawing her magic about her. It seemed she was to have more guests. Someone following Jace, presumably. It was beyond the bounds of probability that she would have two uninvited guests in one evening unless they were related in some way.

            The door to her dining room smashed inward in a flurry of wind and rain. Liliana raised a hand, and the zombies nearest the door surrounded the intruder immediately. “Do you always barge in on a lady’s dinner uninvited?” she asked calmly, looking the man up and down. He was a stranger to her, but clearly a planeswalker, and very clearly not one who was bothering to blend in. The bright red and blue silks were not manufactured anywhere on Innistrad, and the complicated metal gauntlet on his arm had to be of Izzet make.

            Her deduction was confirmed when the man spoke. “Where’s the Living Guildpact?”

            Liliana sipped her wine. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said calmly. “What is a ‘guildpact’?”

            “Don’t fuck with me,” the Izzet mage snapped, and sparks popped from the end of his gauntleted hand. He reached out and fiddled with a dial, which was immediately followed by another shower of sparks. Liliana smirked. A not-very-talented Izzet electromancer. It looked as if Jace would have a friend to swap stories with in his dungeon.

            “Trouble getting it up?” she asked sweetly, snapping her fingers. Two zombies surrounded the Izzet mage, taking him by the upper shoulders. With a momentary glance from side to side, there was a sudden burst of bright white, and both zombies jerked back, limbs spasming out of their control.

            “Where is he?” the other mage demanded in frustration, and Liliana, annoyed, flicked a hand and pulled at a different line of magic. Her mana rods drank the next bolts easily, and this time the mage disappeared under a wave of zombies. Good. Now back to dinner.

            She reached for her fork—and the world exploded. Light and sound filled her senses, and she felt her chair split apart behind her as she was thrown backwards. Dazed, she collided with something soft, and it took her a minute to realize that one of her largest zombies had thrown itself behind her and cushioned her as the explosive went off. She lay still and blinked for a moment, but her vision was a miasma of green and red afterimages.

            Liliana spat an obscenity and pulled herself upright, drawing the last dregs of energy out of the zombie that had caught her. It crumbled to dust beneath her, but her vision stabilized, and she was able to see the Izzet mage pulling himself to his feet, the expended shell of a mizzium charge at his feet. All right, forget the dungeon. This called for the torture chamber. Maybe if he screamed for long enough, she’d feel better about this fiasco of an evening.

            The zombies around her uninvited guest’s legs surged up again, those that weren’t completely blasted apart being mostly unaffected by the explosion. Their hands ripped the Izzet mage’s belt off, stripping away anything that might be used for a repeat performance. He cursed and struggled, but was unable to stop them. Liliana got to her feet a little shakily. “That wasn’t very bright,” she snarled. “Rip off an arm, he can probably live through that,” she instructed the largest zombie, which reached for the Izzet mage.           

            “Fuck this shit,” spat her captive. One hand went to his gauntlet and it started to spit sparks erratically again, which were mostly sucked away by the mana rods.

            “I don’t think that’s going to help you much,” Liliana smiled, and then paused in confusion. He wasn’t playing with the dial; he was undoing the clasps at the top and bottom.

            “I hate this fucking plane,” snarled the mage, and the gauntlet popped off and fell to the floor with a clatter. The stink of ozone rose into Liliana’s nostrils, and she had a brief moment to wonder if she had miscalculated when lightning surged again.

            To their credit, the mana rods tried to do their job. The first bolt, thicker than Liliana’s arm, was drawn to them, but the energy just kept coming, and Liliana felt the channels swell and then break down under the sudden assault. In sudden terror, she started to reach for the Chain Veil, but she never got the chance. Electricity surged through her, crushing her lungs and snapping her suddenly unresponsive limbs into a tight bow-shape. The world flickered out into red pain.

            “Okay, let’s try this again.” Liliana gasped, snapping back to consciousness with a groan. Everything hurt. Her muscles were aching, and her skin felt as if it was on fire. “Where is the Living Guildpact?”

            All right, this was no longer worth it. She could take this out on Jace another time. “He’s in the dungeon,” she gasped. “I was going to let him out in a few days.”

            “Give me the keys.” The Izzet mage was carefully slotting his gauntlet back onto his arm. “And tell me how to get to the dungeon.”

            “First right after you leave the dining room, and then just go down,” Liliana said grimly, reaching for a familiar thread of black mana, only to find it gone from its normal place. Her zombie gatekeeper was dead, too, then. Grinding her teeth to avoid showing the pain she was in, she pulled herself into a sitting position. “I don’t know which of the zombies you melted has the key. You’ll have to find it yourself. There’s only one keyring.”

            “Thank you.” He stood up. “And from now on, stay away from Jace.”

            Liliana barely had time to wonder who the hell on Ravnica was on first-name terms with her ex-lover when another bolt of lightning sent her spinning backwards into a pile of dead zombies to think dizzily that someone really seemed to want his paperwork filed properly.

~

            Jace’s heart gave an unpleasant thump when something rattled at the door handle. He’d been assuming Liliana would at least leave him alone for the rest of the night. He looked up, trying to gather enough energy to planeswalk if he needed to, but he very much hoped he didn’t have to.

            The door opened, and Jace’s jaw dropped. Ral Zarek was the last person he would have expected to see on Innistrad of all places, especially stalking angrily into Liliana’s basement with ripped, singed clothing and holding a zombie arm in one hand.

            “Uh,” said Jace.

            “Get the _fuck_ up, Jace,” growled Ral. “We’re going home.”

            Jace cast about for an appropriate reply. “I’m chained to the wall,” was all he came up with.

            “Then get off the plane.”

            “Ral—I can’t.”

            “Tell me she didn’t fuck with your spark.” For a moment, a strange expression passed over the Izzet mage’s face.

            “No, I just meant—I need to stay here because—”

            Ral actually growled as he knelt beside Jace. “So you’re just an asshole who doesn’t care about Ravnica, then.”

            “That’s not true!” Jace protested angrily. “I’m trying to make sure the same plane-devouring creatures that nearly destroyed Zendikar don’t get anywhere near Ravnica!”

            “You what,” Ral said blankly, but he undid the chains. Jace hissed with pain as he was released, and curled in on himself, shivering and rubbing at his wrists.

            “Thanks,” he got out through chattering teeth as Ral hovered awkwardly over him. “How did you get past Liliana?”

            Ral bared his teeth in a vicious grin. “How do you think?” He snapped a finger and a cascade of sparks leapt to the ground.

            “You _electrocuted_ Liliana Vess? You—you didn’t kill her, did you?”

            “Would that be such a bad thing?” Ral asked irritably, putting out a hand for Jace to take. Jace paused. “No, I didn’t kill her. I doubt I could have managed it, and I didn’t want to try.” He helped Jace stand awkwardly, and Jace stumbled a half-step toward him as his frozen legs had trouble carrying him. Ral shook his head and passed a hand across his eyes. “Really, Guildpact? Can’t we just get back to Ravnica now? I’m sure you have many lovely papers to sign.”

            “Look, Ral, I’m grateful—really I am—but I really do need to do this.”

            “You need to save the multiverse from some kind of plane-eating monstrosity.”

            “Yes, look, I can explain later, but for now, I think I’d better get moving.”

            “Why don’t you explain on the way?” Jace paused and stared at him. Ral stared back for a moment, then both eyebrows went up. “What, you expect me to abandon you on this plane when you’ve already nearly been eaten by werewolves and gotten thrown into a dungeon by a necromancer?”

            “But…” Jace trailed off. There was no actual reason that Ral couldn’t come with him, he just wouldn’t have thought the other man would want to.

            “But what? I can’t actually forcibly drag you back to Ravnica, and I’d rather make sure that the incarnation of law and order from my home plane doesn’t die a grisly death somewhere off plane,” Ral replied irritably.

            A peculiar feeling welled up in Jace’s chest, and he shut his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to shake it off. It didn’t quite go, but his breathing steadied, at least. “Ah—thanks,” he said awkwardly. He put out a hand, and Ral stared at it for a long moment before taking it.

            “Hm,” he grunted. “Well, come on, then,” he said finally. “We’d better find an inn or something to spend the night.” He gave Jace’s hand one last rough squeeze before both of them turned to the door. As Jace followed him out, he felt his stomach turn over in a strange and not entirely unwelcome fashion. He didn’t think anyone had ever come after him before.

**Author's Note:**

> Can I just say I loved everything about "Unwelcome"? Seriously, just everything, it was amazing <3\. So of course, who would I be if I didn't write a mildly Zelereny follow-up? =3


End file.
